Chump Change

This is a Henry Milleresque tale about a young writer (the author’s alter ego, David Henry) who quits his job as a letter clerk at Newsweek and decamps New York for the friendlier environs of Toronto. There, amidst various escapades and seductions, he obtains a freelance job writing an observation piece about Toronto for Canada’s premier political/cultural journal. This leads to a job as a newswriter for the CBC, which, in a gratuitous salute to Miller, the author dubs the Cosmodemonic Broadcast Corporation. Unfortunately, Toronto is not Paris, nor is the author’s style as lively or as cynical as Miller’s, though some of his protagonist’s observations about modern civilization and the rise and decline of the written word are interesting. Eventually the protagonist’s self-destructive urges, so clearly laid out at the outset of the novel, get the better of him, and he finds himself in that “fallen” state of freedom to which he has aspired all along–a rejuvenation of the Milleresque happy-go-lucky character.

HousebrokenConfessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad

Novelist and journalist Eddie (Chump Change) is living a dissolute bachelorhood of bohemian squalor and interchangeable “sexually forthright, non-rocket-scientific young women” when he finds the love of his life in the form of a family-minded woman. He was wary of the crimp domesticity might put in his literary aspirations, but when son Nicholas comes along, the avowedly unemployable writer decides that he was “born to be a househusband.” He may stay home while his wife goes to work, but he’s not entirely housebroken: he uses the corner bar and neighborhood lingerie shop as day-care centers, longs to join the glitterati, muses about divorce on a hellish family vacation, exists for long periods in a haze of boredom and sleep-deprivation and wears the indelible social stigma of the stay-at-home dad.

Damage Control

A straight-shooting, hilarious, and off-beat guide for everyone everywhere who’s ever screwed up, botched an important project, or put their foot in their mouth and wants to know, “Now what?”

Viewed from a certain angle, you could say that David Eddie’s whole life is a mash-up of mix-ups, mis-steps, and mistakes. He is so wellknown for getting himself into awkward situations that he’s dubbed himself “Faux Pas-Varotti. ” When he opens his mouth, out comes a seemingly neverending “faux pas-ria” of blunderiffi c blurts. But the benefi t of being such a maestro of missteps, such a sultan of Shame, is that over time he’s learned the secrets to emerging from his screw-ups with dignity intact. In fact, with his extensive experience in error-rectifi cation and blunder-management, he’s become something of a Shaolin priest, a Wu Tang master, of damage control. And now for the fi rst time ever in book form, David – along with Team Damage Control (helmed by Chief Operating Editor Pat Lynch) – will share those hard-won secrets on how to learn from, and make the best of, a variety of seemingly devastating situations. Building on his enormously popular advice column, David provides simple rules for recovery, whether it be to your latest offi ce gaffe or party blooper – or worse. Reading Damage Control is like meeting a good, old friend for a drink when you fi nd yourself on the wrong side of the etiquette fence and need to talk. After all, he’s probably screwed up worse than you and has a great story about it, and he’ll give you honest feedback and practical suggestions.